Has anyone else come across job title madness lately? It seems we stumble across new, bizarre and bewildering names or acronyms for what people do every day. But what do they all mean and are they all as important as they sound?
Okay, I’m a managing director and that makes sense. I manage DTS and because I co-own it I’m a director (in other words, what I say goes). I could put MD after my name, but I’m not sure that would be wise lest I be confused with an important health professional.
I could call myself a CEO (chief executive officer) or COO (chief operating officer) but I’m already doing both those jobs as managing director, and they’re really pretty much the same thing anyway. I quite like the sound of CXO (chief experience officer). This position is responsible for the overall experience of an organisation’s products and services. But I (along with co-owner Colin South) sort of do that already as well.
Colin could call himself CIO (chief information officer), CDIO (chief digital information officer) or IT (information technology) director. These are all titles being bandied about at the moment, but we think ‘technical director’ will do fine because he manages the technical stuff and what he says also goes.
We don’t have (or need) a CFO (chief financial officer) or a CFOO (corporate officer responsible for managing financial risks) but we do have Business Development Managers and you can guess what they do.
It’s possible some of these specialised titles could be helpful in certain situations, but you have to wonder whether it’s often just a way to make someone sound really important – like calling a petrol station attendant a refueling technician.
Personally, we like to keep things simple and real at DTS, and if I was hiring someone I would much prefer their CV said they had experience at Subway managing the till and interacting with customers rather than that they had worked as a sandwich engineer or bread selection consultant.
In closing I thought I might share some interesting job titles I found during a quick skate around the internet:
• Galactic Viceroy of Research Excellence (Microsoft)
• Fashion Evangelist (Tumblr)
• Hacker-in-Residence (Linked In)
• Bacon Critic (Time Inc)
• Dean of Pizza (Pizza Hut)
• Chief Play Officer (Toys ‘R’ Us)
• Happiness Hero (eBay)
• Director of First Impressions [receptionist] (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• Head of Global Trends and Futuring (Ford Motor Co).
What a load of jobbledygook! But if I was hiring, some of these people just might get a look in – solely on the basis of their brazen creativity.
Steve Ritchie
Managing Director
